A lot, apparently. The headlines surrounding Groupon have been mostly bad since the company’s IPO. The company has had two earnings restatements, growth has decelerated, Starbucks‘ (NASDAQ:SBUX) Howard Schultz left the board and the business model is being shifted to selling goods. Groupon’s stock has plunged from $31 to $4.79 during the past year, putting GRPN at a valuation currently 40% less than it was during December’s venture round!

And the most recent hit: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some of Groupon’s marquee investors are fleeing. Andreessen Horowitz dumped all its holdings, Fidelity cut its stake by about a third and Maverick Capital reduced its share count from 6.3 million to 2 million.

Still, not all of Groupon’s investors are bearish, and some actually have upped their investments in GRPN — those in the bullish camp include T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ:TROW) as well as Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), which was the company’s lead underwriter.

The lesson? Sometimes, the so-called “smart money” makes mistakes. Even the world’s top financial minds can get caught up in bubble behavior and make bad deals — in fact, that’s a common theme in tech history, as exemplified by the 1990s.

If anything, the optimism of the smart money might actually bode poorly for hot tech companies. After all, the descent from popularity suffered by Groupon also has played out in several other deals, including Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Angie’s List (NASDAQ:ANGI).

Thus, when considering a hyped investment — especially in an IPO — patience can be your greatest virtue. More often than not, you eventually can get in at a much better valuation and avoid some heavy losses.

Based in Silicon Valley, Tom Taulli is in the heart of IPO land. On a regular basis, he talks with many of the top tech CEOs and founders trying to find the next hot deals and finding out which start-ups are stinkers.

A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.

Tom is routinely quoted in the media about upcoming deals with his interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, but he is eager to take your questions too. You can message him on Twitter at @ttaulli. And feel free to weigh in via the comments section on any of his IPO Playbook posts.